Einstein's other theory

In 1947 Zionist leaders asked Albert Einstein to work a miracle and persuade a sceptical India to support the birth of a Jewish state. His fascinating correspondence with Jawaharlal Nehru has recently surfaced in Israeli archives. Benny Morris analyses their exchange

Albert Einstein was a somewhat reluctant Zionist. To be sure, he often referred to himself as a proud Jewish nationalist, and declared that though the Zionist enterprise was threatened by "fanatical Arab outlaws" (as he phrased it in 1938) the country would become "a centre of culture for all Jews, a refuge for the most grievously oppressed, a field of action for the best among us, a unifying ideal, and a means of attaining inward health for the Jews of the whole world". In a letter to the Manchester Guardian in 1929, he lauded the "young pioneers, men and women of magnificent intellectual and moral calibre, breaking stones and building roads under the blazing rays of the Palestinian sun" and "the flourishing agricultural settlements shooting up from the long-deserted soil... the development of water power... [and] industry... and, above all, the growth of an educational system ... What observer... can fail to be seized by the magic of such amazing achievement and of such almost superhuman devotion?"

But his praise of Zionism was peppered with unease. Traumatised by central European anti-semitism, Einstein was keenly aware of the potential for excess embedded in nationalist ideologies and movements. From early on, he found much to admire in the liberal vision, propagated by some Palestinian Jewish intellectuals, of a binational Arab-Jewish state. Speaking in New York City in 1938, he declared: "I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state... My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power... I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain."

Indeed, in 1952 he turned down an appeal by Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, that he become the state's second president, following the death of Chaim Weizmann. Einstein argued that he wasn't suited for the job but also that he feared that as president he would "have... to assume moral responsibility for the decisions of others", decisions that might conflict with his conscience.

But it was to Einstein that Zionist leaders turned in the summer of 1947 in the hope that he might work a miracle and persuade India to support the establishment of a Jewish state. A miracle was needed because the all-powerful prime minister-designate of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, traditionally opposed Jewish statehood. Not that he was unaware of the Jews' history or needs: "It is one of the wonders of history how the Jews, without a home or a refuge, harassed and persecuted beyond measure, and often done to death, have preserved their identity and held together for over 2000 years," he wrote in the 1930s, even before the Holocaust. "Everywhere they went they were treated as unwelcome and undesirable strangers . . . Humiliated, reviled, tortured, and massacred; the very word 'Jew' became a word of abuse."

Nehru was also deeply cognisant - unlike most Arab critics of Zionism - of the Jews' roots in Palestine, "a holy land for the Jews... and, to some extent, even [for] the Muslims". But "there was one little drawback", one "not unimportant fact" that had been "overlooked" in Britain's Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine: The country was not "empty [and] uninhabited... It was already somebody else's home." And the local Arabs "were afraid that the Jews would take the bread out of their mouths and the land from the peasantry". It was, of course, Nehru conceded, "a tragedy that two oppressed peoples... should come into conflict with each other. Every one must have sympathy for the Jews in the terrible trials they are passing through in Europe... [and] one can understand them being attracted to Palestine." But "we must remember that Palestine is essentially an Arab country, and must remain so".

Einstein's four-page letter of June 13 1947 to Nehru focused on moral and historical arguments. He opened with praise for India's constituent assembly, which had just abolished untouchability. "The attention of the world was [now] fixed on the problem of another group of human beings who, like the untouchables, have been the victims of persecution and discrimination for centuries" - the Jews. He appealed to Nehru as a "consistent champion of the forces of political and economic enlightenment" to rule in favour of "the rights of an ancient people whose roots are in the East". He pleaded for "justice and equity". "Long before the emergence of Hitler I made the cause of Zionism mine because through it I saw a means of correcting a flagrant wrong."

Not that Einstein liked nation states but the world is divided into nation states, and "the Jewish people alone has for centuries been in the anomalous position of being victimised and hounded as a people, though bereft of all the rights and protections which even the smallest people normally has... Zionism offered the means of ending this discrimination. Through the return to the land to which they were bound by close historic ties... Jews sought to abolish their pariah status among peoples."

Einstein then played his trump card: "The advent of Hitler underscored with a savage logic all the disastrous implications contained in the abnormal situation in which Jews found themselves. Millions of Jews perished... because there was no spot on the globe where they could find sanctuary... The Jewish survivors demand the right to dwell amid brothers, on the ancient soil of their fathers."

He seemed to disingenuously finesse the core dilemma raised by the Zionist enterprise: "Can Jewish need, no matter how acute, be met without the infringement of the vital rights of others? My answer is in the affirmative. One of the most extraordinary features of the Jewish rebuilding of Palestine is that the influx of Jewish pioneers has resulted not in the displacement and impoverishment of the local Arab population, but in its phenomenal increase and greater prosperity."

But then Einstein took the bull by the horns, "the nature of [the] Arab opposition. Though the Arab of Palestine has benefited... economically, he wants exclusive national sovereignty, such as is enjoyed by the Arabs of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria [sic]. It is a legitimate and natural desire, and justice would seem to call for its satisfaction." But at the end of the first world war, the Allies gave the Arabs 99% of the "vast, underpopulated territories" liberated from the Turks to satisfy their national aspirations and five independent Arab states were established. One per cent was reserved for the Jews "in the land of their origin". "In the august scale of justice, which weighs need against need, there is no doubt as to whose is more heavy." What the Jews were allotted in the Balfour Declaration "redresses the balance" of justice and history. He concluded by appealing to Nehru to brush aside "the rivalries of power politics and the egotism of petty nationalist appetites" and to support "the glorious renascence which has begun in Palestine".

Nehru answered on July 11. Curiously, he began his three-page letter with an implicit apology - couched in terms of the inescapability of pursuing a line dictated by realpolitik, however camouflaged by tributes to morality: National leaders, "unfortunately", had to pursue "policies... [that were] essentially selfish policies. Each country thinks of its own interest first... If it so happens that some international policy fits in with the national policy of the country, then that nation uses brave language about international betterment. But as soon as that international policy seems to run counter to national interests or selfishness, then a host of reasons are found not to follow that international policy."

The implication was that Indian national interests or "selfishness" required a vote against partition and Jewish statehood; though unmentioned in the background was Hindu India's ongoing struggle with its large and powerful Muslim minority, which uniformly opposed Zionism, and the coming battle against Pakistan, in which India would need as much international support as it could muster, including from Arab and Muslim states.

Nehru then went over to the moral offensive: "I confess that while I have a very great deal of sympathy for the Jews I feel sympathy for the Arabs also... I know that the Jews have done a wonderful piece of work in Palestine and have raised the standards of the people there, but one question troubles me. After all these remarkable achievements, why have they failed to gain the goodwill of the Arabs? Why do they want to compel the Arabs to submit against their will to certain demands [ie, partition and Jewish statehood]?" Einstein had failed to convince him.

Zionist officials prepared a draft response. The draft letter stressed themes touched on by Nehru, including Zionism's economic benefits and British responsibility for the ongoing troubles (as in India, the imperialists always used "divide and rule"), as well as the reactionary nature of Arab societies and rulers. It accused Abdur Rahman of being "viciously hostile" to Zionism and pleaded with Nehru to abjure mere "verbal sympathy" and to act with "real statesmanship." It is unclear whether this draft was sent to Einstein and it appears unlikely that Einstein ever signed it or sent it to Nehru.

The Zionists made one last effort to "turn" Nehru, in a last-minute cable from Weizmann, two days before the general assembly vote. "Cannot understand how India can wish [to] obstruct such [a fair partition] settlement," he wrote. But it was no use. On November 29 India voted with the Muslim states against partition. (The Zionists needed, and won, a two-thirds majority: the vote was 33 for and 13 against, with 10 states - including the UK - abstaining.)

Nehru greatly admired Einstein, as a humanist and scientist. The two men met, I believe for the only time, on November 5 1949, in Einstein's rooms in Princeton. It was Nehru's only "private" meeting during his trip to the United States.

· Professor Morris's latest book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, is published by Cambridge UP.